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Mass of angry gamers, more like

Until recently Jennifer Brandes Hepler, a writer at BioWare, Electronic Arts' role-playing game subsidiary, was little-known outside the inner circle of BioWare fandom. Within those small circles, Hepler had for some time been a polarising figure. Or, more precisely, a kind of hypothetical Jennifer Hepler has been a polarising figure. Periodically, quotes would be attributed to her on the Bioware web forums. In these quotes the imaginary Hepler might, for example, promise to make Commander Shepard, the leading figure of the popular Mass Effect franchise, come out of the closet as a central part of the hotly-awaited third and final part in the series. The actual Hepler has no involvement in this game. Last week, a couple of these fake comments were rolled together, combined with some selective quotation from an interview Hepler gave in 2006 and posted, along with a picture of Hepler, to forums outside BioWare's reach.

It is hard for non-gamers, or indeed almost all gamers, to understand the fury this caused. The suggestion made by Hepler in the interview that she did not like actually playing games caused considerable anger. After all, this woman was living the dream, working for one of the largest, best-funded and most credible of the major development studios. The sense of injustice was tangible.

The excised part of the interview made it clear that she had in fact meant the elements in games requiring manual dexterity, because she struggled to complete them and because, with a baby on the way, her spare time would shortly be reduced to almost nothing, making her wish for a button that would allow her to fast-forward through action sequences that she might otherwise have to replay repeatedly. The full interview can be found here, and also includes such apparently uncontroversial comments as:

Since I started working in paper-and-pencil RPGs, I've loved the gaming audience and how passionate they are about their games. Through my whole time in Hollywood, I always gravitated toward game-related projects, and when I went to GDC in 2005, it was like coming home. When I realized how much more I liked the people in the games industry than in film and television...and how much more passionate they were about their jobs...I began to actively pursue a full-time career in gaming.

Video games without the game

On the surface, the idea of a video game where the game parts can be skipped does seem counter-intuitive. However, BioWare's games, which regularly sell millions of copies, contain hour upon hour of dialogue - a single game might last upward of 40 hours, alternating between exploration, combat and conversation, with long chats interspersed with selectable dialogue options. Writers and voice actors bring characters to life, aiming to create a range of fleshed-out allies and enemies, some of whom may even be available for the player to romance. Actually typing that out is a salutary reminder both of how marvellous and how odd gaming is.

The Illusive Man (who is both elusive, allusive and, being a hologram, illusory), played by Martin Sheen, and Commander Shepard (Mark Meer) have the first of what will be many awkward conversations in Mass Effect 2. Evil President Bartlett is, sadly, not a potential boyfriend for either gender of Commander.

The idea of a free pass on difficult action sequences is not actually a revolutionary one. If anything, Hepler was ahead of her time. L.A. Noire, the troubled but successful 1940s sleuth-em-up released last year by RockStar Games, did exactly this. After failing an action sequence a set number of times, the game gives the option of skipping it and moving on to the next interrogation or search for clues. Mass Effect 3 will have both an "action" mode, where the conversations occur as non-interactive cutscenes, and a "story" mode, where the combat is made significantly easier, alongside its "guns and conversation" default. Many casual and social games are barely challenging, prioritising regular engagement over hand-eye coordination.

Gamerphylactic shock

However, this suggestion, along with a picture of Hepler showing her as neither a man nor a supermodel-thin woman, enraged a certain sector of the gaming community. Unfortunately, this rage coincided with Hepler's decision to open a Twitter account. In fairly short order, this account was used to tell her that she was obsese, a cancer destroying BioWare, that video games hated her and that she and her "pig fetishes" should be driven from the Industry. That's the industry which felt like coming home for her, just as a reminder.